Week In Music - 07 to 13 November 2010

Posted on November 13, 2010

This week in music was dominated by a couple of new discoveries: Frank Zappa and Wim Mertens. Also, I listened to a few more songs/artists a bit more intently and so they’re present in the playlist as well.

The playlist

The boring bit

Zappa is a well known musician (composer, guitarist, record producer and lots more) which is largely unknown to me. My music teacher, being a fan of the man and his work, often mentions Zappa songs when looking for examples of many issues in music theory. This week he directed me to a few specific songs for me to listen to and analyze.
And so it is that I am now starting to discover Zappa’s music, years after he passed away. I’m starting out with just a few songs, looking for specific elements in them, such as “The Black Page Drum Solo”, or “Let’s Move To Cleveland”. I’m looking at elements of rhythm in the drums, just in case you’re curious. :-)
One thing I’ve always been partial to is live performances and there is ample material from Zappa for me to sink my teeth into as I go on (“Zappa in New York” is sounding really good).

Wim Mertens is another recent discovery. I went to a live show here in Lisbon, this very week, and I was hooked. My friend João is a long-time fan and he’d told me about Wim already, but I’d just never got around to actually listening to anything of his until the show.
I must say his singing is somewhat unusual and, as far as I can tell, this concert was very different from the usual ones in that the piano took somewhat of a second stage to the violin. Nevertheless I loved the concert and I’m loving the album that João lent me afterwards –“Epic That Never Was”, a live album recorded in a concert in Lisbon. It is way much more piano solo-oriented than the concert was and so far I’m loving it.
For a taste of what the show was like you can watch this video of Wim Mertens and Tatiana Samouil playing “The Belly Of An Architect”.

The rest of the playlist comprises a bunch of unrelated songs:
There’s a couple of songs I am working on right now by the Dave Matthews Band; Then there’s an artist I recently started listening to more intently, due to this post by Célia Ventura–Galt MacDermot–; and finally, to round things off (and to make the minimum 8 tracks for the playlist), an old favourite of mine that came up on a shuffle sequence and I really liked to listen to again–Billy Joel’s “Got To Begin Again”.